Traditionally, a stream of images, recorded by a single motion picture camera, or video camera, is displayed upon a screen to produce an illusion of motion. If a rotational effect of a subject were desired, one would circumnavigate the subject with a motion picture camera and display this series to simulate the rotational effect. But, how would one freeze a subject in one position, say a diver, entering the pool, with water-splashing up all around, and create a rotational motion picture effect about the frozen diver? To freeze the diver in one instant, traditionally one would need to circumnavigate the diver in almost no time (approximately 1/2000 second or less), with a super-high frame rate motion picture camera. I believe that no such circumnavigational camera device exists. If one wants to freeze, then visually rotate an even faster subject, such as an artillery shell leaving the muzzle of a large military gun, one would need to circumnavigate the speeding shell in 1/500,000 second or less. What if one wanted to walk into a room full of fluttering butterflies, have the butterflies appear to freeze in their current positions, and be able to cinematically record and display a motion picture simulated “walk” through this room of frozen butterflies? You can do these things, and more, using arrays of cameras, pre-positioned around, or through a subject area. Then sequentially displaying the records made by the many members of these arrays.
Several inventors (see examples below) have suggested methods employing arcurate or circular arrays of camera devices to capture different horizontally displaced photographic records of a subject with the object of facilitating the production, or reproduction of works of sculpture or of providing 3D still or motion picture representations of the subject. None has suggested, or, in my judgment, anticipated the methods and mechanisms to produce the useful and novel frozen effects described above and other kinds of effects described below in my specification.